House of Deception: The Unrivaled Series

by Brandi Elledge

  I wouldn’t survive weeks here. I had a feeling that the Puppeteer had embarrassed the majors, who would want to pay him back. I would be collateral damage. No, I couldn’t stay here. I was finding that damn apron, and then I was getting my ass fired.

  My hands shook as I scrubbed the first toilet. Before they had been healed, I’d had third-degree burns. Burns that, left unattended, could have sealed my fate as a human, considering we didn’t have doctors. But that wasn’t what had me shaking. It was the man who had healed them.

  Under the pretense that I was in the bedrooms to clean, I made sure to straighten up each bathroom, but only halfheartedly. I barely cleaned one bathroom as I moved on to the next. Before I went into the connecting room, I did a little search to make sure I wasn’t in Halton’s room. If the bedroom was occupied by an unrivaled, I completely skipped it.

  Making my way down the corridor, I entered a bedroom that was larger than the others that I had already been in. With its masculine colors and expensive décor, I felt hopeful that I had finally come across the head of the house’s bedroom.

  I gently shut the door behind me then quickly began to scan the room. Then, checking the drawers that were up against the wall and the dirty clothes that were scattered everywhere, I walked around the unmade bed. That was when I saw a blue string sticking out from underneath the bed. I dropped to my knees and looked under the skirt of the bed, smiling as I went to grab for the apron that had Raven’s name embroidered into it. However, before I could fully pull it out, I heard voices.

  Making a hasty decision, I shot underneath the bed, holding the apron to my chest. The knob turned and voices trailed in.

  “Why are you acting so weird?” I recognized that voice. It belonged to the brunette woman—Catarina.

  “Why is he here?” Halton asked.

  “The Puppeteer? Someone said he was visiting all the houses.”

  “Yeah,” Halton said, “but it’s not his job to do that. I mean, who made him king? We don’t need him here, at our house, questioning us.”

  She sat down on the bed, and I stopped breathing. I was curled in a tight ball as fear leaked from me.

  “I don’t know,” Catarina said. “I think it’s kind of cool that he is here, checking on us.”

  Halton threw something across the room.

  I flinched, sucking in air.

  “Did you hear that?” Halton asked.

  “Hear what?”

  I was dead. Dead.

  I closed my eyes and prayed that I wouldn’t be found.

  When a hand closed around my ankle, I gave a shriek as I was pulled out from underneath the bed.

  Halton jerked me roughly up to my feet. “Why are you here, orphan?”

  Catarina stood up slowly. “I bet she was stealing from you.” She narrowed her brown eyes in disgust. “Make her talk, Halton.”

  He jerked me toward the door. My feet wouldn’t stay underneath me, so he ended up dragging me down the hall. My feet got tangled in a hall runner for a brief second before Halton practically lifted me off the ground. Then he half-carried me to the banister where he did pick me up and held me over the railing, dangling me over the marble floor below. If he dropped me from this height, my head would explode like ripened fruit.

  “Okay, orphan, talk. Why were you hiding in my room?”

  What excuse could I give him? I had nothing. Anything I said would implicate me or Raven. He was going to kill me.

  Hanging upside down, still holding the apron, I shoved it down the front of my shirt.

  “What is she doing?” Catarina asked. “She is trying to hide something.”

  Holding me by an ankle, Halton lightly swayed me back and forth over my impending doom. The black and white marble floor was winking at me from below. Then a man appeared below. His face was swinging in and out of view, but one thing was for certain—he was staring up at me, wearing a smirk on his face as if he could have predicted that we would meet again like this.

  “Hello, Little Thorn,” he called up from below. “I see you didn’t take my warning.”

  I felt Halton loosen his grip on me as he let out an expletive. I flailed my arms about like a turkey trying to fly as I crashed toward the ground. Seconds before I met my fate, however, I felt something like strings tie around my limbs and middle. With a jerk, I came to a stop.

  My mouth was open in shock as I was righted, my feet dangling two inches above the ground. Then, with unbelievable gentleness, I was lowered until my feet touched the marble floor.

  The Puppeteer was standing a mere foot away from me, his eyebrows raised. “So, would you like my offer of help now?”

  I felt the ties around me release as I looked up toward the third floor to see Halton slamming a hand down on the railing then taking off at a run, with Catarina at his heels. They were coming down here.

  I took a step closer to the Puppeteer as I heard footsteps pounding down the stairs. Others were starting to pool out of the dining room and the great hall to see what all the commotion was about.

  “Yes,” I said.

  He narrowed his blue eyes as his nostrils flared. “Tell me, Thorn, are you human?”

  My eyes rounded in shock. Had he just asked me if I was a worker? Had he not seen me cleaning the fireplace? Had we not had a conversation only an hour before about me cleaning toilets?

  Pain started radiating through my body. My mind felt like it was cracking. Then, as if I was having an outer body experience, I felt my lips move.

  “Of course.”

  He had just forced me to answer him!

  Memories started flashing in my brain, being swiped away as soon as they appeared. I gasped for air as they continued to pop up, and I trembled as a headache began to form. All of a sudden, the tightness that had cocooned my entire body was released and I could breathe again.

  “Sorry about that. Sometimes I become a tad impatient.”

  Halton was practically jogging toward us now, pointing his finger at me. “This one was in my room, snooping. Catarina said she saw her with something of mine. I want her searched now.”

  The Puppeteer’s blue eyes landed on me, a smirk on full display. “Hmm … Well, this is actually my new employee. If she has done something to offend you, I’ll have her dealt with.” He said all this while looking at me.

  “Tell me, Thorn, have you taken anything that belongs to Halton?”

  “No,” I said.

  “She lies,” Catarina snarled while coming up beside Halton.

  The Puppeteer lost his smile. “I can assure you that I would know if she was lying.”

  Catarina faltered for a moment. “Of course you would. I just thought … I mean, I thought I saw her clutching something in her hands.”

  “Perhaps she was, but I can promise you it didn’t belong to Halton.”

  Halton was fuming mad. “This orphan was working here in this house today. She still belongs to us.”

  The smile was back now. “Thorn, who do you work for?”

  I bowed my head. “You, sir.”

  “I believe that is all we need to know,” the Puppeteer said. “I’ll be leaving now with my employee.” He grabbed me by the elbow and began steering me out of the foyer. Without turning around, he kept his back to my enemy while he spoke to the twenty or so who had gathered in the foyer. “Oh, and a friendly reminder; if you come after what I’ve claimed, I’ll tear your whole house down, piece by piece.”

  My back was stiff as I walked slowly toward the front door with him. I doubted that anyone would attack the man next to me, but I hoped they wouldn’t attack the person who he was escorting out of the house. I had already been burnt once, and I didn’t care to relive that pain.

  As we passed a couple of guards stationed outside the house, the Puppeteer said, “Tell me where this friend of yours is who has landed you in hot water.”

  I felt violated. When he had wrapped my brain in a cocoon, he had obviously seen way more about my life than most people.

  I
narrowed my eyes as I spat out, “Back home with a horrible stomach bug.”

  He cocked his head to the side. “I’m sure. You know I love a good suspense. I’ll tell you what. I will escort you back to your shack and check on her.”

  “No!” I exclaimed. “I mean, why would you do that?”

  “I have healing powers. Don’t you want your friend better?”

  I swallowed nervously. “I can’t have an unrivaled showing up at my shack. People would talk.”

  He studied me for a minute. Whatever he saw had me shifting nervously from foot to foot. “Fine. I have some other business to take care of anyway. Tell me your exact shack number and location, and I’ll come to check on her after darkness.”

  “No, really, it’s fine.”

  “Oh, I insist, Thorn.”

  The way he said my name had me squinting. “Shack forty-three, in the House of Ash division.”

  He silently walked me toward where the land was divided from unrivaled and workers before saying, “Go on home, Little Thorn, and pack. I have a feeling you are going to love working for me.”

  Not responding, I picked up the pace, feeling the Puppeteer’s eyes on me as I rushed home.

  I had been burnt, dangled over a banister, waiting to fall to my death, and humiliated today, yet I had a feeling the worst was yet to come. I just prayed that whatever the future held for me didn’t involve mine or Raven’s eyes gouged out like Mary’s.

  Raven stood by the creek, pacing up and down the rocky bank while she mumbled to herself. She fumed as she ignored the looks of the people who walked the dirt path parallel to the creek.

  “Okay, explain to me one more time why we have the freaking Puppeteer, the most powerful and undisputable unrivaled in all of the five major houses, coming to our humble abode.”

  I sighed. “I told you. I got caught in Halton’s room.” I pointed at the apron that she now held in her hand. “I found that, but it almost cost me my life. The Puppeteer threw me a lifeline. It was either take his offer and live to die another day, or literally die right then. I decided I wanted to die another day.

  “After he helped me get out of the situation—and I say that word loosely because we all know that the unrivaled never do anything that is not advantageous to them—he said he wanted to come by to see how sick you are. Honestly, Raven, I’m hoping he will forget to come by. Forget that he wanted me to become his worker. Maybe I can return to the fields tomorrow and this will all have been a bad dream. We should have never gotten involved with these people.”

  She sighed. “I said I’m sorry.”

  This was true, but she was also more aggravated that the Puppeteer was coming by than she was upset that I almost died today.

  I wrung my hands, causing her eyes to narrow.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You’re doing that thing you do when you’re hiding something, when you really don’t want to say it out loud.”

  “What thing?”

  She pointed at my hands that I was still wringing. “That thing.”

  “The Puppeteer can do this trick where he sees into your mind. Sifts through it at an unbelievably rate. I’m pretty sure that he knows why I was in Halton’s room, and there is a good chance that he will lord that over my head somehow.”

  “He knows about me?” she squeaked. “About me and Halton?”

  “Not by my choice! He literally flipped through my memories like he was sifting through pages in a book.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “Did he offer me a job, too?”

  I shook my head. “No, but I’m hoping that, when or if he comes here, he will release me as his worker. Hopefully, both of us will be back in the fields tomorrow, and neither one of us will ever speak of this again.”

  “You can’t leave me,” she said. “You take care of everything. I wouldn’t survive.”

  “I won’t,” I promised.

  I didn’t know how I could stop the Puppeteer from doing anything, but if he meant that I was to be his worker, then I would make sure that Raven was his worker, too.

  I grabbed her elbow, steering her through the crowd of villagers who had just gotten off work. As the sun went down, the farmers and pickers went home to their pitiful houses just to get up at sunrise and start all over. This life sucked for the average.

  “I’ll tell you exactly what we are going to do if he shows up.” I pushed her into the shack and closed our door that was barely hanging on its hinges. “Maybe he doesn’t know that you aren’t sick. You are going to crawl in the bed and act like you are asleep. I’ll put a cloth on your forehead. He will either believe us or not. If he insists that I work for him, then I’ll insist that you come with us.”

  She kicked off her muddy boots and climbed onto the small bed that we shared. “And what if he is coming here just to attack me, because I was stupid enough to get involved with Halton?”

  I jerked the covers up to her chin. “Then I’ll clean your wounds after you’re whipped, and if he takes your eyes, I’ll lead you around so you don’t bump into things. I don’t know, Raven. We just have to hope for the best, even if we think the worst is yet to come.”

  As she lay there, not moving, I went over to the stool and sat, waiting for darkness to fall. It was very possible that the overconfident major had come to his senses and decided not to wait around for darkness just to acquire a worker. Workers were a dime a dozen. Maybe he wouldn’t come. However, when there was a rap of knuckles hitting flimsy wood, I knew that I had underestimated the unrivaled.

  Standing, I went to the door. There stood the Puppeteer in the same black pants and black silk shirt.

  “May I come in?” he asked.

  Like I could deny him.

  I stepped to the side as he ducked to enter our home. He was so tall and muscular that it was almost claustrophobic with him in our shack.

  He took a look around, and I knew what he saw—a one room shack. There was a stool, a makeshift bed, and a pot in the corner in case one of us couldn’t hold our bladders until sunrise. I tried to keep our small home as clean as possible, but with dirt floors, it was a losing battle.

  He then turned toward me, stepping closer to the candlelight, and I almost rolled my eyes as I was assaulted by his beauty. He really should have a bigger scar. He was handsome and, along with being a major, he was obviously narcissistic and mean, so those two attributes alone should serve him well in life.

  “So,” he started, “this is your friend?” His blue eyes never left me, but I knew he had noticed the lump in the bed.

  “Yep. And sick, as you can see.”

  He walked around the frumpy bed. When his eyes landed on her, I knew that we were in trouble. There was something about how his gaze zeroed in on her.

  He laid a hand on her forehead, and I silently congratulated Raven for not flinching. Even her breathing was deep and even. She was a for shit liar, but at the moment, she was doing great.

  He stood up to his full height and pointed at the stool. “May I?”

  I nodded, though I didn’t entirely know if the stool would withstand his weight.

  He was quiet for several minutes as I waited for him to say something. His perceptive eyes never left me. I had to force myself not to squirm under his gaze.

  “Thorn, your friend is not sick, but I think you know that. What’s her name again?”

  “I actually think she is getting better now. And it’s Raven.”

  “Hmm. Raven, why don’t you go ahead and sit up?” His voice was authoritative, holding no room for reasoning.

  She sat up robotically and threw her legs over the side of the bed. Her bottom lip was trembling as I inched my body in front of her.

  A smile lit up the Puppeteer’s face. “If I wanted you, or your friend, dead, I could have killed you both without even entering this home.”

  That was far from comforting.

  My heart beat faster. I wasn’t sure exactly what the Puppeteer was capable of, but I knew the rumors that circulat
ed around him were probably more than true.

  Clearing my throat and gathering my courage, I said, “I would really like to stay here and go back to work in the fields.”

  “Oh, I’m sure.” He sounded amused. “Unfortunately, Halton doesn’t like anyone getting one up on him. If I leave you here, you will be dead within a week’s time. These are the games that majors play.”

  They play with humans lives like they’re nothing.

  I balled my fists beside me but didn’t say anything. From the look on his face, I didn’t need to. He could smell my anger from there.

  “Gather your things, ladies,” he suddenly ordered.

  My mouth dropped open. “You are going to allow her to come with me?”

  He nodded. “I’ve seen enough of your horrible human memories to know that you wouldn’t leave her here.” His eyes turned cold as he skimmed over my friend. “Why, though, I don’t know. You almost died for her.”

  I tilted my chin up. “She would have done the same for me.”

  He lifted his brows. “Would she have?”

  Raven reached up from the bed and grabbed my hand. I stiffened my spine but didn’t move.

  He sighed deeply. “Here is how this is going to go. I’m going to talk, and you both will listen. When I’m done, I’ll give you a choice. You can either stay here in this rat-infested place, waiting for death, or you can come with me.” He nodded his head toward Raven. “Just so we’re clear, the first thing Halton will do when he comes for our dear Thorn here is notice you. If you don’t leave her high and dry, then he will make an example of you. I will offer you both sanctuary at my house just for the simple fact that I happen to dislike Halton.”

  I narrowed my eyes at the Puppeteer. Not only did I sense he was holding something back, but I didn’t trust him. I would be a fool to. “Tell me how we would be any safer at your house?”

  One side of his mouth curled up. “Maybe you won’t, but you will be able to avoid the impending doom that is coming your way here.” He stood. “I can promise you that, as long as you come to work and do your job, then you won’t have any issues. However, I can’t promise you what will happen if either of you stay here.”